Beyond product: Materials development as a vehicle for professional growth

Abstract

For several years in distance education settings, teaching‐learning specialists have collaborated with subject specialists to produce learning materials. In such partnerships, while a major focus has been on production per se, another outcome has been the professional development of the subject specialist. This paper reports on a collaborative project where the development of learning materials served as a vehicle for quite comprehensive professional development. This paper argues that such an approach, where product development and professional development are intertwined, is most effectively facilitated on a one‐to‐one basis where the specifics of the process are tailored to the needs of the subject specialist. Such collaborations are also most likely to be effective if grounded in strong theoretical principles. The case study reported here was founded on principles of action research.